Gestational Diabetes Exposed Mesenchymal Stem Cells: Phenotypic Differences Link to Long-Term Health of Offspring

TL;DR

This paper explores how mesenchymal stem cells from GDM pregnancies show changes that may predict long-term health risks in offspring.

Contribution

The paper reviews how GDM-exposed MSCs can serve as markers for offspring health and potential interventions.

Findings

GDM-exposed MSCs show phenotypic differences linked to fetal programming.

These changes may predict increased risk of obesity and T2DM in offspring.

MSCs could be used to test interventions for improving long-term offspring health.

Abstract

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) derived from the placenta, fetal membranes, or umbilical cord may be used to study the pathophysiology of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). The phenotype of MSCs may reflect fetal programming in response to the maternal milieu of a GDM pregnancy. Altered fetal programming is linked to high rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in the offspring of mothers with GDM. This review discusses recent findings characterizing the phenotype of GDM-exposed MSCs (GDM-MSCs) which enhance our understanding of the mechanisms of fetal programming. It also considers how MSCs may be used as markers of long-term offspring health to test the benefit of putative interventions and highlights the need for further translational studies to clearly link the MSC phenotype to clinical parameters and interventions.